No matter how hard you try, there will always be clients utterly determined to take advantage of your good faith. Speaking to the client on a regular basis will allow you to casually mention the invoice and get confirmation without risking conflict. If you sent an invoice several weeks ago but you’re not sure if it was received (and there are no extenuating circumstances), then there’s a problem with your client communication. By covering both bases, you can make it less likely that your invoice will simply be missed. Some companies get so many emails and pieces of digital correspondence that messages can easily be lost. There are businesses out there that still require their clients to process their invoices manually, even though it isn’t difficult to provide an online payment setup with the sum already filled and options like JotForm, PayPal, and others on the table. It’s understandable that you’d want to accommodate a new client, but if you tolerate a lack of professionalism early on, it’ll cause you problems later. Start as you mean to go on, as the saying goes. Above all else, make sure you understand the basics of professional invoicing as a freelancer to avoid miscommunication and error in the first place. Of course, it’s much easier to never have to chase down a past-due invoice in the first place. Here are some core suggestions for improving your chances of getting paid promptly and avoiding a past-due invoice: Ways to prevent late paymentsĮven just one late payment can be extremely damaging to your business, particularly if you’re having difficulty keeping your cash flow positive: it can cause you to miss outgoing payments, leading to a domino-style chain reaction that leaves you in dire straits.īecause of this, while there are some good ways to handle past-due invoices (and we’ll get to them), the best thing you can do is ensure that as many payments as possible are made on time. Here, I’ll be using overdue to refer to invoices that are not only past-due but also very late: past-due invoices that have lingered on long enough to make direct action necessary.Ĭonsider that a past-due invoice might only be a day late, but an overdue invoice might be a month late. In the context of this article, though, we’re going to treat them as distinct. Most commonly there’s little or no difference between past-due and overdue, so you can simply use whichever one you prefer. We’ll also set out some example scripts to use in order to effectively get paid for your past-due invoices as quickly as possible.Īs for an overdue invoice, it really depends on your use of language. In this article, we’re going to detail what past-due invoices involve, how you can avoid needing to deal with them, and how you can make your responses as good as possible when they’re necessary. So how should you handle this issue when you’re left waiting to be paid? They imagine saying the wrong things and somehow sinking their reputations, scaring their clients away.Īs a result, they often end up letting offending clients get away with their delaying tactics, which of course just exacerbates the problem by showing that there are no consequences for letting an invoice get past-due. They worry about being too forceful, or too agreeable - too passive, or too proactive. When something has gone wrong, someone desperately needs to right the ship.įor most people, though, past-due invoices can be extremely delicate matter to approach. You need emergency fallbacks for when those clients don’t seem overly eager to justify their sluggish response times. In the end, you need to chase the clients responsible. If you’re a freelancer, then there’s an excellent chance that you’ve had your difficulties with a past-due invoice-most likely on far too many occasions. Unfortunately, despite all of this, late payments remain quite common across all disciplines and fields. With the proliferation of easy online payment tools, how is it freelancers still have to battle with past-due invoices? They need only to dig up the past-due invoice, pay it using whatever payment method they prefer, and move on. What’s more, it shouldn’t be that hard for a client to pay what they owe. You’ve reached an agreement, and done the work. It’s the principle of the matter that really grates. There are plenty of things in the business world that are more frustrating than dealing with a past-due invoice, but few that are more irritating.
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